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CRFECT LIFI 



VRBS BEATA 

A Vision °f tke Perfect Life 



-BY-' 

HERBERT CUSHING TOLMAN, Ph.D., D.D. 

Professor of the Greek Language and Literature, 
Vanderoilt University 



WITH A COMMENDATORY 

—BY THE— 

BISHOP OF MILWAUKEE 



Milwaukee 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

JPtES RECEIVED 

1902 

a Copyright entry 
Of ASS ft^XXa No. 

*r» iff 

COPY 3. 



Copyright 1902 



HBBBBRT CUSHING TOLMAN 



TO 
MY MOTHER AND MY WIFE. 



COMMENDATORY. 

TT IS a genuine pleasure to commend this little volume. 
Not only because of the intrinsic merit to be found on 
all its pages, but also because the reverend author and pro- 
fessor is a valued presbyter belonging to this Diocese; and 
one who here, seven years ago, when connected with our 
own State University at Madison, made his entrance into 
the Ministry of the Church, and received the Sacred Gift of 
Holy Order. 

His growing sphere of duty has since called him to a 
distant and distinguished Institution, where his large at- 
tainments in letters, added to the spiritual gifts of his holy 
calling, make him an ever-increasing power for good. 

We humbly ask God's blessing upon this endeavor to 
show the glories of the "Heavenly City" to the students of 
the University. And we are sure, the publishing of these 
short daily meditations will tend to deepen the spiritual 
lives of some others, whose privilege it may be, as ours has 
been, to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" them. 

Isaac Lea Nicholson. 

Bishop's House, Milwaukee, Wis., 
Nativity St. John Baptist, 1902. 



FOREWORD. 

CHESE are a few very familiar and simple five-minute 
talks to College students at Morning Prayers. They 
represent one month at the University Chapel. I do 
not believe there is a more sacred or responsible calling 
than to be a teacher of young men. God grant that by life 
and precept we may inspire those under our instruction 
with a sense of the dignity and divineness of life. May 
they realize at the outset that the immortal life begins 
here and now, and that Christianity is the Christ life in 
the soul. Herbert Ctjshing Tolman. 

Vanderbilt University, 
June 1, 1902. 



URBS BEATA. 

I. 

I Saw the Holy City. 

CHE VISION": It is a true saying that the 
eye sees only what it brings to itself the power 
to see. 

So many go through a spring day heedless of 
the song of birds, unobservant of the flowers and 
trees, seeing not the cloud shadows resting on the 
hills or the glories of the sunset. 

On how many ears are the rapturous sym- 
phonies of a Beethoven but dull sounds ! 

Far truer is it in the spiritual world. Life is 
a divine vision, but how few grasp it ! 

The noble life is the life of exalted vision ; the 
narrow life is the life of contracted vision; the 
dissolute life is the life of perverted vision. 



10 URBS BEATA. 

In Dante's Paradiso the nine spheres around 
the God of glory are adapted, each to the capacity 
of the class of saint to receive the vision of God. 
This is not, as Lowell truly points out, merely 
a picture of the future life, but a symbol of the 
present state of the soul. 

Is it not true that the highest vision of God 
comes to us at the highest point in our develop- 
ment ? 

An artist sees in the landscape, beauties and 
glories which my untrained eye cannot see, and so 
he comes nearer to the God of Beauty. 

In your work to-day as college students, you 
must come nearer to truth, but nearer to truth 
means nearer to the God of Truth. And in that 
divinest of all our capacities, love, do we not, as we 
give forth love, increase in love and so come nearer 
to that loving heart of God ? 

So many students seem to take, as the motto 
of life, Horace's nil admirari; they appear to act 
and speak as if there were nothing in life to wonder 
at, nothing to admire. 

Lack of admiration, or pretended lack of ad- 
miration, is no virtue ; it is no sign of a wise man. 
It is the mark either of stupidity or conceit. 



UKBS BE ATA. H 

He most of all sees with the great world vision 
of the divine Christ, who beholds in life mnch 
to admire, ay, who beholds much to love. 

The pupil of the eye is a very tiny thing, yet 
there enter into it, if we will let them, the wonders 
of the physical world. So the soul of man, a thing 
so small in this infinite universe, is capable of re- 
ceiving into itself the transcendent glories of God. 
But remember that the process is gradual and 
demands effort. We do not see the beauties of 
nature all at once. Observation and study are 
required. 

Spiritual vision is no exception to this law. 

Man's highest endeavors cannot attain, nor 
eternity reveal, the fulness of God. 

Yet he comes nearest to God who sees Him 
best. 

ISFote these remarkable words — which I render 
somewhat freely — of Professor Harnack to the 
students of the University of Berlin : 

"Thirty years of experience have taught me 
that knowledge is a mighty force, but yet it can 
give no answer to the great question Whence and 
Whither. It rectifies the delusion of sense, dis- 
covers error, supplies new facts. But it is only 



12 TJKBS BEATA. 

the vision which comes on the mountain-tops of 
our inner lives, the vision of those high ideals, 
those noble purposes, those guiding forces out of 
which we are to make our real selves, that leads 
to the great Beality, God." 

The life which has once caught this holy vision, 
can never remain the same, but is forever new. 



II. 

New Jerusalem. 

nEWNESS OP LIFE: Life grows only by 
the renewing of itself. 

Every thought we think, every book we read, 
every duty we do, every kindness we render, makes 
us new men. 

After the commission of any act, we can never 
be as we were before. Our experiences become 
ourselves. 

We can believe the declaration of an idealistic 
philosophy as given by Professor James, that, "the 
whole world of natural experience, as we get it, 
is but a time-mask, shattering or refracting the 
one infinite Thought, which is the sole reality, into 
those millions of finite streams of consciousness 
known to us as our private selves." 



14 UEBS BEATA. 

Our present makes our future ; and the words 
of Emerson are true, that "he who would be a great 
soul in the future must be a great soul now." 

The tree is new each day because it takes on 
new growth. 

"We can imagine," says Gordon, "kinship be- 
tween the flower and the star, because both are 
beautiful, or between the acorn and the oak, be- 
cause there lies in the acorn the capacity for a mag- 
nificent life; but between the existence that is 
necessarily self-seeking, and the Eternal Love, 
there can be no fellowship." 

I saw in the Acropolis Museum at Athens, an 
archaic sitting statue of Athene. As a work of art 
it was uncouth and grotesque. Straight lines 
marked the folds in the drapery. A silly smile 
upon the lips was the effort of the sculptor to give 
animation to the face. The Aegis, as a huge 
stone rested upon the breast. But without the 
rude figure, do you think the Athene Parthenos 
would have been a reality? It was because the 
Greek art was new daily that Phidias could give an 
image of the Olympian Zeus so majestic and so 
calm that a worshipper, as in a holy place, ex- 
claimed : 



URBS BEATA. 15 

"Oh, Phidias, either Zeus canie down from 
Heaven to reveal to thee his likeness, or thou didst 
ascend into Heaven and behold him there." 

It is the glory of life, that it is new every day ; 
new in its hopes, its endeavors, its trials. The 
old philosopher, Solon, reckoned the days of an 
average life at 26,250, and yet no day was the 
same as another. 

His life is dead to whom each day is not as a 
new life. 

Phillips Brooks once said to the Harvard stu- 
dents : 

"A new heaven and a new earth must come 
when a new man comes to claim it. The only 
way for us to make a new world is to be forever 
new men." 

The life new and ever renewed is the New 
Jerusalem that comes down from God. 



III. 

Coming down out of Heaven from God. 

DIVINENESS OF LIFE : Our lives not only 
depend on God, but they partake of the divine 
nature. In the sublime poetry of Wordsworth, 

"Trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, Who is our home." 

It is a philosophical truth, that, "we lie in the 
lap of an immense intelligence which makes us 
receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. 
When we discern justice, when we discern truth, 
we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of 
its beams." 

As applied to life, we should think of the Holy 
City not merely as a place, where, if we enter, we 
shall be in a condition of perfect felicity. He 



TJSBS BEATA. 17 

who should enter Heaven unfit for it would be of 
all men most miserable. 

Let us in our brief talks consider the Holy City 
as the state of the soul fitted to commune with God. 

Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, 
Thomas More, all endeavored to picture an ideal 
commonwealth. 

But the Holy City is no external thing. 

The Kingdom of God — that expression often- 
est on the lips of Christ — is within man. It is 
the divine life of the soul. 

Is not the definition true that the perfect life 
is that which is in perfect accord with a perfect 
environment ? 

Heaven is a life in perfect accord and perfect 
communion with God. As the Persian poet sang : 

"I sent my soul through the invisible, 

Some letter of that after life to spell ; 
By and by my soul returned, to me 

And answered, "I myself am Heaven or Hell.' " 

St. John saw the Holy City having the glory 
of God. 

How grand and wonderful is this symbol of the 
soul ! Each one of us must ask himself : 

"Does my life show God's glory ? Will others 



IS URBS BEATA. 

see there the divine beauty and so bear witness that 
we have been with Jesus ?" 

Every life is a continuous revelation of God. 

What Professor Herrmann says of the Church 
is equally applicable to the individual, that the 
exposition of the Gospel of our Lord is through the 
life which one develops out of the treasure which 
he posssesses. 

Our lives are true because God is true. They 
are beautiful, because God is beautiful. They are 
loving because God is love. And they are holy 
because God is holy. Is this beatific vision becom- 
ing daily more and more a reality within our- 
selves ? If so, we have entered upon, and are liv- 
ing, the immortal life, and our souls are being 
made ready for oneness with the Divine. 



IV. 

Made Beady as a Bride Adorned for her Husband. 

ONENESS WITH CHKIST : "I want to tell 
you a story," says Socrates, "which you may 
regard as an old wife's tale, but I consider a true 
story. 

"It is said that in the days gone by the superin- 
tendents of both the Islands of the Blessed and 
of Tartarus came to the Lord of Heaven and com- 
plained that mortals were coming to them un- 
worthy of the place whither they were sent; men 
were going to the Islands of the Blest who ought 
to have gone to Tartarus, and men were going to 
Tartarus who ought to have gone to the Islands 
of the Blest." 

" '1 know this is going on,' the Lord replied, 



20 UKBS BEATA. 

'and the reason is that mortals are judged 
here on earth just before death, and they who judge 
them are living judges of living men. Now the 
human senses, the eye, the ear, etc., are hindrances 
to them, and besides that, witnesses come forward 
to testify to their noble birth and their virtuous 
lives. 

" 'But I have put a stop to all this, for I have 
ordered the trial to take place after death, so the 
naked soul may judge the naked soul stripped of 
all adornments of earth.' 

"The Judge shall look upon a soul, but 
he will not know whose soul it is; it may 
be the soul of a very powerful man; it may be 
that of the great king himself; but he will only 
see that the soul is unsound and scarred in conse- 
quence of acts of sin, and he sends it to Tartarus 
where it must become purified before it is fitted 
for communion with the blest. Another soul he 
sets before him, and again he does not know whose 
soul it is ; it may be the soul of a very lowly man 
— but he sees that it is sound and unscarred by be- 
ing nurtured in truth, and he sends that soul 
straight to the Islands of the Blessed. 

"In view of this," continues the old Philosopher, 



UEES BE ATA. 21 

''the supreme endeavor of my life is, not to win the 
honors of earth, bnt to present my soul sound and 
pure and beautiful and whole before the Judge. 
But escape from evil," Socrates again remarks in 
another place, "is to make myself as near like God 
as possible — <i>vyy & o/*otWts fow. And if you 
ask me," says he, "what it means to be like God, 
let me say it is to be as true and as holy as I 
can — and this is to be as near like God as pos- 
sible." 

A noble vision of one of the noblest person- 
alities that ever talked with men! Transposed 
into the grand organ notes of Christianity, let this 
great truth find echo in our lives : 

"We all with open face, beholding the glory 
of the Lord are changed into the same image from 
glory to glory." 

Made ready as a bride adorned for her hus- 
band, means that our lives must be more and more 
and more transformed, beautified, and glorified, 
that they become fitted for union with the Divine 
Life of our Lord Himself, a union symbolized by 
the holy marriage bond. 

Godliness is Godlikeness. 



22 UEBS BEATA. 

Before we speak of the qualities that go to 
form this perfect life, let us consider the infinite 
value of every life, in God's sight. 



The Foundations were Adorned ivith all manner of 
Precious Stones. 

771 OETH OF LIFE : "What makes the mud ?" 
^V says Ruskin; "sand; but the particles of 
sand, under a higher law, form the opal. Clay; 
from the same particles which make clay comes 
the sapphire. Soot ; but even soot in its perfected 
crystallized form becomes the diamond. Water; 
but water in its purity is seen in the dewdrop in 
the heart of the rose." 

So in each life, however sinful, degraded and 
low, there is the divine. On this divine, God is all 
the time working through the personal life of 
Christ to transform the life into the beauty and 
purity of the precious stone. 



24 UKBS BEATA. 

I once heard that great worker among the 
masses, Dr. Kainsf ord, of New York, define love as 
the quality that appreciates values. A good defini- 
tion. If one should bring me a gem, especially if 
its beauty be obscured in any way, I should fail 
to realize its value. Let the trained eye of the 
jeweler fall upon it and instantly it will detect 
values which I did not observe. Many a mother 
has said to me : 

a You have my son in your class, and he is such 
a fine boy." 

And I have thought sometimes that he was a 
very commonplace boy. We hear so much of a 
mother's exaggerated love. But I do not believe it 
was illusion on the mother's part; I believe that the 
love which has been over her boy since babyhood 
saw in that life what my inexperience had failed 
to see. If this be true of a mother's love, how 
infinitely more true is it of the divine love which 
must see the preciousness in each human soul ! 

'Tis very easy to love those that love us, but in 
lives tarnished with hate and envy, in lives pol- 
luted by degradation and sin, to see the divine 
possibilities which are there, that is Christianity. 

The German Jean Paul Eichter was right 



TTRBS BEATA. 25 

when he put, as the highest proof of the perfect 
life, tenderness towards the hard, forbearance to- 
wards the unforbearing, warmth of love towards 
the cold. 

Oh, the opportunities to bring out the beauties 
of life! ~No man, however inferior his position, 
can say that the value of his life is not revealed or 
enhanced because of lack of opportunity. Man is 
the master, not the slave of circumstances. 



VI. 

Behold I have set before thee a door opened. 

OPPOKTUNIT Y : Life is opportunity. 
Before us is an open door. 

Is there one, who, as he looks back over life, 
does not see doors which once stood open but are 
now shut forever ? 

Each day is an open door. 

There is the open door of duty, the open door 
of service, the open door of kindness. 

I meant to have told my friend of the love I 
feel, but he has passed into the unseen and the 
door is shut. A noble service I might have ren- 
dered, but I cannot recall that opportunity any 
more than I can recall yesterday. I am judged 
for it now — I am judged for it forever — eternal 
judgment. 



URBS BEATA. 27 

The college life passes and with its close that 
door of magnificent opportunity is shut. 

Our lives are full just so far as we have been 
faithful to life's opportunities. 

The larger the life, the larger has been the use 
of opportunities. 

The dwarfed and useless life is the life before 
which once stood open doors, but these, unentered, 
have been shut forever. 

"And they that were ready went in with him 
to the marriage and the door was shut." 

~No matter how seemingly insignificant may be 
our opportunities, their results are beyond human 
understanding. 

A holy legend tells of a giant, who, dwelling 
beside the river bank, carried over the swift cur- 
rent helpless children. One tempestuous night 
there came a small voice crying : 

"Carry me across the waters I" 

The giant wondered whether it was worthy the 
effort to cross the stream amid such a raging storm, 
but he took the babe in his arms and entered the 
torrent. Suddenly his burden grew heavier and 
heavier so that the giant cried in fear lest it crush 
him, but soon he found that the heavier became the 



28 TJRBS BEATA. 

burden the greater grew his strength. He reached 
the further shore. When he gazed, the child had 
gone, for One stood there who looked upon him 
with a face of transcendent love, and said : 

"Faithful servant, it seemed a little service, 
but forever and forever thou shalt bear the sacred 
name 'Christopher,' for on thy shoulders thou hast 
borne this night the Christ Himself." 



VII. 

Palms in their Hands. 

HCHIEVEMENT : Not opportunity, but the 
use of opportunity brings success. 

"Man," says a famous writer,"is the architect of 
circumstances. Our strength is measured by our 
plastic power. From the same material one man 
builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, 
another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and 
bricks until the architect makes them something 
else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the 
same circumstances, one man rears a stately ed- 
ifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompe- 
tent, lives forever amid ruins." 

There is no conflict more real or heroic than 
life. From childhood to old age it is, and is in- 
tended to be, a struggle. 



30 UEBS BEATA. 

Any other conception of life than that of the 
hard fight, the intense daily combat to free the soul 
from self, is hostile to that redemption which Jesus 
brought. 

To live as I ought demands my highest powers ; 
and so far as I hinder the outgoing of my life or 
make stunted its stature or obscure its vision, just 
so far am I defeated in life's struggle. 

I shall never forget how old scenes pressed 
upon my imagination as I stood within the sacred 
enclosure of the Altis at Olympia. I saw the 
Kronos hill crowded with spectators, while relatives 
and friends sent forth cheer upon cheer of encour- 
agement. I saw the palm branch of victory and 
heard the herald's voice proclaim the conqueror's 
name and country. But without a struggle, of 
what value is the prize ? 

Eemember Epictetus' words : 

"When difficulty comes upon you, do not forget 
that it is God who is training you that you may 
become an Olympian victor, but the contest is 
stern and is not won without sweat." 

Our eternal glory will be not to bear palms of 
victory, but to have conquered. 



VIII. 

The City Lieth Four-square. 

SYMMETBY: Life's struggle must be the 
putting forth of all our powers, not of one 
merely, in the making of developed manhood. 

Among the Pythagoreans the square was the 
symbol of perfection and of the divine nature. 

Simonides pictures the ideal man as four- 
square, built without blame; yet in order to con- 
done vice he confesses that it is well nigh impos- 
sible to become thus perfect. 

Plato quotes the passage, and the calm thinker, 
Aristotle, remarks that a good man is a man four- 
square, since both are perfect. 

I remember in dedicating a book to a ripe 
scholar, I chose the same sentiment as the highest 



32 TJBBS BE ATA. 

Compliment I Could bestOW — ^vSpl ayaOw Ttrpaywu 
avcv ipoyov Tervyfievta' 

An old commentator on Plato, writing in 
Latin, says that the figure is apt because the cube 
is so formed that on whatever side it falls it is 
bound to stand erect with all its sides and angles 
equal, and all things in such correspondence that 
nothing is lacking. This is God's ideal of every 
life. 

A cube cannot be overturned, but however it 
may fall, it is always a cube. 

So the true Christian character is evenly bal- 
anced amid all life's vicissitudes. 



IX. 

The Length. 

7JMBITI0N" : "The length of life," says Phil- 
J ■ lips Brooks, a is the reaching on and ont of the 
man in the line of activity and thought and self- 
development. It is the push of a life forward to 
its own personal ends and ambitions." 

Life reaches out towards something. 

A life without a purpose is meaningless. 

A man cannot be a real man unless he feels in 
his inmost soul that life is the freeing and enlarg- 
ing of his powers. 

First of all it is essential to know what we are 
going to do and then to prepare for it. So many 
men start with enthusiastic hopes, but fail for the 
simple reason that they are unprepared for the 
struggle. 



34 UBBS BEATA. 

So many, again, are ready to enter life's work, 
but lack of courage brings failure. 

So many neglect to study the course best fitted 
to bring out their highest capabilities, and miss 
the highest possibilities of their being. 

Let your reaching out be along the line where 
your natural powers may have the fullest develop- 
ment. Remember Juvenal's: 

E Caelo descendit TvwOl aeavrov, 
Figendum et memori tractandum pectore. 

Heaven sent us "Know thyself." Be this impressed 
In living characters upon thy breast. 

— Qifford. 



And the Breadth. 

UNSELFISHNESS: A mere line has no ex- 
tension. Even the narrow tracing given it 
by the draught-man's pencil is a breadth which 
does not belong to it. So a life lost in self, how- 
ever far-reaching its aim may be, becomes absorbed 
in the length proportion. 

Think for a moment what breadth does. It 
converts the single line into a square. I measure 
ten miles, and I say such and such a thing is ten 
miles long, but let me measure the breadth, and 
my ten miles have become a hundred. I see with 
another vision, for I am considering another di- 
mension. Now, just as the square is greater than 
the line, so is the broad life larger than the narrow 
life, for it sees with the Christ vision. 



36 UEBS BE AT A. 

To be the perfect square, life must be as broad 
as its length. 

I cannot develop the length and then make my 
life somewhat broad, bnt in just that degree in 
which I strive toward some great end, I must en- 
deavor to enter into other lives. 

It is not what we do for ourselves that is going 
to live afterwards, but how far we have become a 
part of other people. 

Horace was right when he styled Vergil "half 
of his life" — animae dimidium meae. 

"Sympathy," says Newman Smyth in his 
Christian Ethics, "is the tentacle by means of 
which the individual feels his relation to the 
social tissue, and conscience is his fully developed 
sense of well being in the social organism." 

One summer while I was the guest of Professor 
Weber of the University of Berlin, I asked that 
veteran Sanskritist what was to him the most sat- 
isfying thing in all his years of teaching. He 
did not refer to the books which he had written, 
nor to the scholastic honors which he had won, 
but he answered: 

"The greatest reward of my life is the fact that 



UKBS EEATA. 37 

your Professor Whitney in America was a pupil 
of mine." 

He felt as all truly great teachers must feel, 
that even in the routine of the class room he is 
making men, and part of his life enters other lives. 

'No life is so lowly that it has not the power and 
the opportunity of making the world better for be- 
ing in it. 



XL 

And the Height Thereof. 

DEPENDENCE ON GOD: Phillips Brooks 
again says : 

"The height of a life is its reach upward to- 
wards God, its sense of childhood, its conscious- 
ness of the divine life over it with which it tries 
to live in love, communion and obedience. " 

Without the height the figure may be a square, 
but a square may be plotted on the earth. There 
is no upward dimension. As the square is greater 
than the line, much more is the difference great 
between the square and the cube. The measure 
ten becomes the hundred of the square, but with 
the height proportion it becomes the thousand. 



URBS BEATA. 39 

Remember that the height of life, the depend- 
ence on God that is to stay the soul in all ex- 
periences, is not made in a day ; it must be a grad- 
ual building Godward. 



XII. 

Are Equal. 

RAPPIKESS : That man has a mistaken con- 
ception of life who does not regard happiness 
as one of its essential qualities. 

We are told that the fruit of the Spirit is joy; 
but true joy is not something outside of , but within, 
the life. 

A life with the length abnormally developed 
is a selfish life ; with the breadth out of proportion, 
it becomes critical and meddlesome; lost in the 
height dimension alone it is apt to become spir- 
itually selfish, and spiritual selfishness is bigotry. 

We ask the result of symmetrical building and 
we answer, "Peace." 

So many think God's peace is something that 
can be superinduced upon a life. Even the wicked 



URBS BEATA. 41 

cry "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. 
Peace is what is built into our lives. As 
Sophocles truly says : 

Nothing out of proportion can enter into life without 
disaster. 

OvSeV !/07T£l 

Ovarwv (3lotw TrXrjfXfxekls e/cros aras- 

Plato identifies happiness with ideal life. So 
Aristotle pronounces happiness to be life, and to 
suppose its addition to a perfect life is as impos- 
sible as to add the quality of health to a healthy 
body. 

To the world a man may seem happy by reason 
of external conditions and he may receive isolated 
impressions of pleasure; but happiness does not 
depend on the succession of experiences. 

Happiness is a state, not a condition. 

Realize the import of the words, a Thou shalt 
keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed 
on Thee.' 7 

Horace's "Man of sound life" — integer vitae 
— not has, but is an armor invulnerable, and con- 
sequently needs no external panoply. So the per- 
fect life of our divine Lord exemplified his pre- 
cept: 



42 URBS BEATA. 

"Seek first the kingdom of God and His right- 
eousness, and all these things will be added unto 
you." 



XIII. 

And the voice which I heard was the voice of 
harpers harping with their harps. 

RAKMOET: The quality of life most akin to 
happiness is harmony. 

Ideal life is perfect harmony. But let us get 
no mistaken idea of harmony. 

Harmony is not inactivity. An instrument 
gets out of tune when disused. Harmony must be 
attained. There must be a twisting, a stretching 
of the chord and a letting loose before the strings 
are brought into unison. 

So in life. Our daily experiences of joy, sor- 
row, temptation, are stretching or letting loose our 
lives into harmony with God. 

Some lives need more twisting than others. It 
seems often as if the chord must break when the 



44 URBS BEATA. 

tension of trial is strong. Brit when all is over, 
what a grand cadence of song ! 

Eternal praise means that our lives will be in 
perfect harmony with God. The Greek word for 
law — vo/xos — and for the musical scale is the same. 
I think that the first occurrence in Greek literature 
of vojaos applied to melody is Alcman's, 

7T(XVTliiV' 

I know the notes of all the birds. 

But in a sense beyond which the lyric poet 
intended, very true is it that every bird which 
trills its morning song offers harmonious music to 
the great Creator. 

Easy is it when men applaud to do some great 
thing, but in the daily drudgery of the most ob- 
scure life where no eye but God's beholds, a duty 
faithfully done is a sweeter symphony to Heaven 
than the grand Te Beum of Cathedral choir. 



XIV. 

That they may rest from their labors. 

DEVELOPMENT: Neither happiness nor 
harmony implies contentment. 

To speak of reaching the goal as if it marked 
the limit of effort is misapplication of language. 
When the college year comes to its close, we say 
that the year is ended ; when four years in college 
have been spent, we say the college course is ended. 

We look only at the beginning and the end. 

The divine idea is the end and the beginning. 

I remember after the final examination at 
Yale, I said to a classmate, "Well, I am through ; 
that's the last examination I shall ever pass." But 
what a mistake! I found there were to be far 
sterner tests in the larger school of life. 

God is the God of activity. 



46 TJRBS BEATA. 

Work is a universal law. 

Activity is life. 

Inactivity is death. 

The water of the bubbling brook is sweet. 

The water of the stagnant pool is pestiferous. 

Rest has been defined, not as cessation of effort, 
but harmony of action. 

Eternity is an unfolding of the life in perfect 
harmony with the divine will. That is eternal rest. 

A foreign writer has said : 

"Were I to hold all truth as a captive bird in 
my hand, I would open my hand and let it fly 
away that I might capture it again." And why ? 
Because there is more exhilaration in the pursuit 
than in the captured game. 

Heaven is Heaven because hope, urging on the 
soul, is there ; and Hell is Hell because hope is not 
there. The inscription which Dante saw over the 
architrave of Hell, Lasciate ogni speranza, is the 
sad commentary on every life that has ceased to 
grow. 



XV. 



And on this side of the river and on that was the 

Tree of Life. 

nATUKALKESS: Yet growth is no sudden 
metamorphosis, but a natural process so grad- 
ual and imperceptible as to escape our observation. 

The acorn does not become the oak in a day. 

We cannot define the moment of time when 
the bud burst into the loveliness of the flower. 

The naturalness of life is receptivity. 

Divine influences are at all times entering our 
lives, which nourish them as the dew nourishes the 
flowers. 

The tree of life flourished for the simple rea- 
son that it grew beside the river, and that river 
flowed as clear as crystal from the throne of God. 
So our lives draw their nurture from Christ. 



48 UEBS BEATA. 

They are to absorb more and more of that holy 
Life, just as a tree drinks moisture. Put the tree 
in an uncongenial soil and its leaves wither because 
it is not living its natural life. 

A dead Christianity is a misnomer. 

When a tree is dead it ceases to draw its nour- 
ishment. So when a Christian ceases to grow, the 
Christ influences in the soul are failing. 

Ideal life is ideal manhood, and ideal manhood 
is the Christ life. 

"The righteous man is like a tree planted by 
the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit 
in its season, whose leaf also doth not wither. The 
wicked are like the chaff which the wind driveth 
away." Do not forget that the tree makes a part 
of itself those elements on which it feeds. 

In our spiritual life, as in our physical life, 
assimilation of food is effected largely by exercise. 



XVI. 

To him will I give of the hidden manna. 

SPIRITUAL EXERCISE : Life is a spiritual 
growth. But how much depends upon the na- 
ture of the food we take, and how we digest it ! 

We must not feed on anything that will create 
a sickly sentimentalism or a bloated bigotry. 

We need the food of healthful Christian man- 
hood. 

Food must be fresh daily. Some food that 
was good fifty or a hundred years ago, may to-day 
have lost the power to nourish. Again, we require 
a different kind of food as we grow. There is one 
food for babes, another for men. But are not 
some Christians still feeding on the spiritual food 
of babes ? 



50 UEBS BEATA. 

It is not the amount of food we take which 
nourishes ; it is what we assimilate and make into 
brain and muscle. But for assimilation there 
must be exercise: without it the stomach becomes 
overloaded. In the same way, only that spiritual 
food which becomes a part of ourselves really bene- 
fits. An excess may produce a sanctimoniousness 
that is no sign of health. 

All spiritual food must be converted by exer- 
cise into spiritual life. 

In the development of life, every exercise or 
giving forth of our powers, re-acts to strengthen 
and broaden them. This brings us to the import- 
ance of service, which is a natural and divine law. 



XVII. 

His servants do Him service. 

SEEVICE: The ideal state, according to 
Plato, most nearly corresponds to a single in- 
dividual. When one part suffers, the whole body 
feels the pain. If the finger is hurt, it is not the 
finger that suffers, but the community of body, and 
we say, "The man has a pain in his finger." 

The isolated life is the life which is shut out 
from divine influences and is self-centred. 

It is only the life of service that is the endur- 
ing life. 

Thomas a Kempis is said to have been present 
in a company of friends, when the conversation 
turned on Heaven. Each one was asked to express 
his highest conception of the happiness of the re- 
deemed. One replied, "They shall see His face." 



52,.. URBS BEATA. 

Another, "There shall be no more pain." When 
at last the question reached a Kempis, he an- 
swered : "His servants shall serve Him." While 
the Greek \arpewrovaLv implies here the most exalted 
form of service, yet an act of unselfish love is 
sweeter service in God's sight than the incense of 
priestly ministrations. 

Look at the bar of iron ; how unattractive and 
useless it appears ; but I watch the machinist as he 
puts it in place in the machine, and I see it become 
a new creature. It throbs with life and becomes 
a part of a great plan. 

Vast the difference ! And yet there is just as 
great a difference between the selfish life and the 
life of service, as there is between the cold 
and repellant bar of iron and the pulsating 
engine. First of all our lives must enter into and 
become a part of the divine purpose, and then the 
service begun here will be an eternal service. 

In a life of service all egoism or pride is ex- 
cluded, because pride is the exaggerated vision of 
the little atom self, and a misconception of its real 
importance in God's world. 



XVIII. 

Shall cast their crowns before the throne. 

RTTMILITY: With the vision of the God of 
glory before the soul, is pride conceivable ? 
It is very common, as we well know, for those 
who have been suddenly raised to positions of afflu- 
ence and power, to become arrogant and overbear- 
ing. This is due to the fact that external circum- 
stances, becoming substituted for real manhood, 
often wreck life. Even the poetess Sappho ex- 
claims : 

'O 7r\ovro§ avev ra? dpeTas ovk derives TrapoiKOS- 
Wealth without virtue is no safe companion. 

It is no wonder that the ancients believed that 
too great weal was hateful to the gods, that the 
evil eye would smite the over-prosperous, that man 
to-day at the top of the wheel of fortune will to- 



54 UEBS BEATA. 

morrow be at the bottom. Knowledge, power, 
riches, are useful only as they serve to enrich the 
soul, for nothing external can beautify the inner 
life. 

It is impossible for a wise man to be a con- 
ceited man, since his greater wisdom teaches him 
his greater ignorance. 

A profound scholar is the humblest of men. It 
is the lack of knowledge that makes conceit. 

"!Not to know," says a wise man of old, "is a 
bad thing, but it is a thousand times worse not to 
know that you do not know." 

I remember how small the Azores seemed to 
me after leaving a continent, but I was told that 
among the little group there is one whose circum- 
ference is forty miles, and a trading steamer 
touches its shores once a month. Many have lived 
and died without ever leaving their tiny home. 
Their world has been just that narrow radius of 
land. But smaller still is God's world to him who 
sees only himself and has no vision of infinitude. 

The large life is the life which, having entered 
into God's eternal plan, has become a part of other 
lives. 



URBS BEATA. 55 

"I know all the Vedas by heart/' said Kuta- 
danta, "but have not found the truth." 

Buddha answered : 

"Learning is good but it is not all-sufficient. 
True wisdom comes by practice of the great truth 
that thy brother and thyself are one. Follow in 
the exalted path of righteousness and thou shalt 
find that while there is death in self there is im- 
mortality in truth." 

Humility is not an ornament, but an essential 
quality of a perfect life. 

Humility is no degraded idea of one's true 
worth, but rather the exalted conception of self as 
a co-worker with God. 



XIX. 

Madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and 
priests, and they reign upon the earth. 

CEADEKSHIP: If we are co-workers with 
God, we shall necessarily become leaders. 

It was a wise provision of Cecil Rhodes to stip- 
ulate in his will that the quality of leadership 
should be a consideration in the selection of candi- 
dates for his Oxford scholarships. A young man 
without leadership is like the dumb sheep that fol- 
lows the flock. As Quintilian says : 

"One can never become the equal of him in 
whose steps he is satisfied to walk, for the man that 
follows must be forever behind" — Necesse est 
enim semper sit posterior qui sequitur. 

While it is true that one should always be will- 
ing to ask and receive advice, yet he must reach his 



URBS BEATA. 57 

own decision and act with resolution. A Caesar 
resolved to rule, and even this cognomen (Kaiser, 
Czar) is to-day the synonym of royal authority. 
A Napoleon's ambition gave the name that desig- 
nates highest worldly success, for "Napoleon of 
finance" is more than a prosperous business man. 

Leadership means the overcoming of obstacles 
in the effort to reach the front. 

It matters not what is our work, but how we 
perform it. 

Far better to be a first-class cobbler than a sec- 
ond-rate lawyer. 

The hewing of the stone is just as important as 
the building of architrave or cornice. 

He who is faithful in the drudgery of his or- 
dinary work-a-day life is just as much a leader as 
he who wears a kingly crown. 

To do our best in what we have to do is to be 
kings and priests unto God, for our Lord will not 
ask us "What have we done," but His criterion of 
judgment will be, "Have we been faithful." 

Earth's heroes may be those who have done 
great deeds amid the blast of trumpets and the ac- 
claim of multitudes, but God's heroes are those 



58 TJKBS BEATA. 

who, perhaps unnoticed and unseen, have stood 
steadfast for the right. 

Leadership must not be confounded with stub- 
bornness. 

Incompetent and faithless is the commander 
who, if he makes a false move, does not immedi- 
ately do all he can to retrieve his fortune. 

The man who makes mistakes is not necessar- 
ily the man who makes a failure of life. Like the 
giant Antaeus into whose limbs were infused re- 
newed vital powers each time he touched the earth, 
he rises more a master for every fall. 

It is he who is persistent in, or repeats, an 
error, that fails. 

And again, whatever may be our success or 
achievement, life, without the love of God in the 
heart, is, as the Apostle says, "but sounding brass 
or a clanging cymbal." I beg of you, remember 
this. 



XX. 



Her light was like unto a stone most 'precious as it 
were a jasper stone. 

|* OVE : A life may be artificially symmetrical ; 
■* so is the block of ice, but the block of ice 
is cold. 

What makes the gem beautiful? If we take 
it into the dark, there is no lustre which it gives 
forth, but it appears dead as a lump of coal or a 
clod of earth. It is God's sunlight which makes 
it sparkle and glitter and become transcendently 
beautiful. 

Is not this just as true of life ? 

What the light is to the gem, love is to life. 
The Christ love must enter the soul to transfuse 
and diffuse its holy radiance. 



60 UBBS BEATA. 

Eckermann in his Conversations with Goethe 
— Gesprache mit Goethe von Eckermann — says : 

"The Christian religion has nought to do with 
philosophy. It is a mighty potentiality in itself — 
sie ist ein macMiges Wesen fur sich — by which 
suffering and sunken humanity is raised God- 
ward." 

Shall we let the flowers, the hills, the stars, 
reveal God, and our lives be like the dismal sod? 
'No, a thousand times, no. Let them be like the 
jasper stone, radiant with love, fitted for God's 
city. 

Kant — Metaphysih der Sitten — defined duty 
towards God as duty towards men. 

Here is Gordon's splendid definition of im- 
mortality : 

"The life eternal is the life of absolute love 
realized in the personal capacity of man." 

So fully had the immortality of love become a 
conscious reality in the lives of those who had 
entered into the spirit of their Lord that they as- 
sert, "We know we have passed from death into 
life because we love the brethren." 

You remember the legend of St. Veronica — 
how as the Saviour passed, she bathed His bleeding 



UEBS BE AT A. 61 

face with her napkin, and suddenly on the cloth 
there appeared the countenance of the holy Christ. 
Behind that legend there is a beautiful truth. 
Every act of unselfish love leaves on the soul the 
Christ likeness which will be as eternal as God is 
eternal. 



XXI. 
Clear as Crystal. 

SIXCEEITY: Herodotus states that among 
the Persians, the Lie was considered the great- 
est disgrace. In fact, King Darius himself on his 
own Behistan Inscription identifies morality with 
truth; and in over forty places within three hun- 
dred lines speaks of the evils of deceit. 

Professor Harnack — Das Wesen des Christen- 
tums — regards as the two points of Christ's pre- 
cepts which cover the entire range of morality, 
purity — in its most comprehensive sense of abhor- 
rence of what is untrue and unholy — and broth- 
erly love. 

Our lives must be absolutely true or they are 
nothing. 



UEBS BE ATA. 63 

Some have the wrong idea that a lie depends 
upon the mere verbal language. 

Remember that a lie is an intentional false 
impression. 

Socrates says that even to speak improperly 
leaves its impress on the soul. 

A hypocrite is not necessarily one who inten- 
tionally deceives another, but often it is one who 
has deceived himself; who has gotten in his heart 
that real lie which Plato distinguishes from the 
verbal lie. 

It is Plato, again, who gives us as the precept 
of his great master that we should desire not to 
seem, but to be, the best. 

"Whoever," says that noble teacher, Professor 
Blackie, "in any special act, is studious to make an 
outward show, to which no inward substance cor- 
responds, is acting a lie, which may help him out 
of a difficulty perhaps for the occasion, but, like 
silvered copper, will be found out in due season. 
Plated work will never stand the tear and wear 
of life like the genuine metal. All flimsy, shal- 
low, and superficial work is a Lie of which a man 
ought to be ashamed." 



XXII. 

And before the throne as it were a glassy sea. 

BEAUTY: It has been suggested that if we 
could analyze the beautiful, the true, the good, 
to their very essence, they would be found to be 
but three-fold phases of the same great reality. 
Old Ben Jonson's, 

"How near to good is what is fair," 

is more strongly put in Sappho's stanza : 

'O fxkv yap KaAos, ocraov ISrjv, iriXerai ( kol\os ) 
'O Se Kaya#os o.vtlkol /cat KaAos eaaerar 
Who is beautiful, as far as seeming goes, is fair, 
But who is good will soon be beautiful as well. 

Can our lives be beautiful and be filled with 
pride, prejudice, envy, hate ? 

Our thoughts are the food of the mind. 



URBS BEATA. - 65 

Our minds are vigorous or diseased as we feed 
them with healthful or morbid thoughts. 

In childhood I used to look through the frag- 
ments of an old bottle of yellow glass, and the blue 
sky and the green grass seemed pale and sickly. 
So many souls are like the yellow glass. Envy 
colors a life and stains the clearness and beauty 
of the divine by the morbid light of hate and greed. 

Beauty is the reflection of love. 

In my rambles through Greece I stood one day 
on the old Scironian Cliffs. The waters of the 
Saronic Gulf beneath were sparkling with a 
myriad of hues and were almost as transparent as 
the clear Oriental atmosphere. All colors of the 
rainbow seemed resplendent in them, changing and 
interchanging as the angle of light varied or as the 
breeze moved over the surface of the waters. 
Here, on a spot that was bristling with all that 
was ghastly in Greek legend, I saw a vision of the 
God of Beauty. 

The sea of glass is the image of human life — 
sin-stained or degraded — but purified and beauti- 
ful when it takes into itself and reflects the holy 
love of Jesus. 



66 UEBS BEATA. 

Let the Litany petition be our daily prayer and 
effort : 

"From all pride, vain glory and hypocrisy; 
from envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- 
ness, good Lord, deliver us." 



XXIII. 

Arrayed in white garments. 

PURITY: Behind all metaphor, we see in the 
application of these words to the perfect life 
the spotless Christ image on the soul. The Apos- 
tle saw that into the Holy City there could enter 
nothing that defileth or worketh abomination. So 
into the perfect life there can come no impurity of 
thought or word or act. 

~No life, as Carlyle says in his Essay on Burns, 
can be benefited by a mud bath. 

Suppose a young man spends five years of his 
life in dissipation, can he take back those five years 
at the end of twenty ? Can he take them back at 
the end of fifty ? Can he take them back forever ? 

Herder, in his Postscenien zur Geschichte der 



68 UKBS BE ATA. 

Menschheit, puts purification of life and the conse- 
quent enlargement of the soul as the real present 
palingenesia. 

True are the words of Persius : 

"Purity of the inner life — sanctos recessus 
mentis — is an offering far more acceptable to 
heaven than all which the dish of great Messala's 
blear-eyed son can hold." 

Every impure thought or deed becomes, as the 
Greek poet Aeschylus says of wrong-doing, a par- 
ent of unholy and numberless progeny. Like 
Frankenstein, that wierd creation of Mary Shelley 
— we send them out into the world and into life, 
creatures of depravity and death. 

Often, very often, we should repeat the prayer 
that "We purify ourselves even as He is pure, — 
that we may be made like unto Him in His eternal 
and glorious kingdom." 

ISTo impure soul can stand in the Holy Pres- 
ence. 

Christ has told us that it is the pure in heart 
which shall see God. This is communion. 



XXIV. 

God Himself shall be with them. 

fELLOWSHIP WITH GOD : True life is a 
constant and increasing communion with God. 
Such communion is faith. In fact, let me define 
faith as friendship with Jesus, a trust in His per- 
sonality. 

Watch friendship as it develops in a life. It 
is not made in a day. The friendship of a year is 
one thing, and the friendship of fifty years is an- 
other. 

I have a friend in boyhood and I love him with 
the love of boyhood. 

I have a friend in manhood and I love him 
with the love of manhood. The same friend in 
old age is entitled to and must receive that trust- 



70 URBS EEATA. 

ing and intelligent love that all the years of friend- 
ship have brought. 

"Uncle Hiram/' they said to the dying man, 
"You will soon be with God." 

"Be with God!" came the confident reply; 
"why, I have been with Him all my life." 

Friendship with Christ, communion with God, 
must mean more and more to a life as it moves 
onward. Every friend must become a part of my 
life, and friendship with Christ must stamp the 
Christ image on the soul. 

How irregular are the bits of glass that make 
up the cathedral window, but let the sunlight shine 
through, and in what before seemed so rude and 
shapeless we see the form of saint, or Madonna, or 
the holy face of Christ Himself. 

Life may seem just as irregular, yet let the 
Christ friendship shine through it and it becomes 
transformed and glorified. 

Communion with God now, communion with 
God forever, that is life. 



XXV. 

They shall see His face. 

« BOWING FAITH: If faith is communion 
with God, it cannot be a mechanical thing. 

Faith is not a Procrustean bed, nor is faith 
like a garment which one must put on. Such a 
faith would be a manufactured faith, and might 
chafe us here and gall us there. 

Faith is nothing artificial, but it is something 
living and growing. 

My faith of to-day must be broader, fuller, and 
more satisfying than my faith of yesterday. 

There is a faith of childhood, beautiful and 
confiding, but it is the faith of childhood. The 
faith of manhood must be augmented and tested 
by all the years have brought. 

Knowledge is to grow more and more complete. 



72 URES BEATA. 

Plato's simile of the cave is a good illustration 
of our imperfect knowledge. In a dark den only 
shadows of real objects appear and men confuse 
the shadow with the real. Let them be brought 
into the light and stand on some high eminence in 
the presence of the sun ; their eyes would be blind- 
ed and their sight would be clearer in the darkness. 
They would think the illusion of the cave truer 
than actual vision. 

There are two kinds of blindness. The en- 
trance into the dark and the entrance into the light. 
So the perplexities in regard to matters of faith 
that come to college students are often but the un- 
certainties of vision that mark the entrance into 
the light. Our lives at first are like the cave, but 
light enters gradually and we grow into the knowl- 
edge of God. 

The child faith passes into the more intelligent 
faith of manhood until we come into that perfect 
light where we behold our Lord with undimmed 
vision. 

Perhaps the strongest point in the work of the 
German scholar, Professor Herrmann — Der Ver- 
hehr des Christen mit Gott — is the clear exposi- 



UEBS BE AT A. 73 

tion of how the Christian's vision of God through 
the personality of Jesus saves from mysticism. 

Believing about a person does not necessarily 
influence a life. 

I may believe that Napoleon studied at Bri- 
enne in l779-'84, that he opposed Paoli in 1793, 
that he concluded the peace of Amiens in 1802, 
etc., etc., and yet what influence would Napoleon 
have on my life ? But ask one of the Old Guard, 
"Do you believe in Napoleon ?" and you will hear 
him answer : 

"Believe in Napoleon ? Why, he is my leader. 
I have been with him. I was with him at Mar- 
engo, at Austerlitz, at Jena." 

What is the difference between myself and 
him ? I knew facts — perhaps more than he — 
about Napoleon, but he knew his personality and 
that personality had become the all-pervading in- 
fluence of his life. In the same way, historical 
statements about our Blessed Lord are theology, 
but the Christ influence in the life is religion. 



XXVI. 

Golden howls full of incense which are the prayers 
of the saints. 

IJ BAYER: Prayer is life-long communion 
■ with God, a communion which brings our will 
into such accord with God's will that we are con- 
vinced of receiving our request or something trans- 
cending it. 

I remember Professor Henry Drummond giv- 
ing me a good illustration of prayer. He told of 
how a little girl was crossing the ocean and lost her 
doll into the waters. She went to the Captain and 
begged him to stop the ship. 

"No, my little girl/' he said, "I can't stop this 
ship for your doll." 

But the child thought him a hard, cruel cap- 
tain not to stop the ship for her doll. 



TTRBS BEATA. 75 

Some time later a man fell overboard and the 
great engines, which had been ceaselessly at work 
since the voyage began, stopped. A boat was low- 
ered and a life was saved. 

When the vessel reached the haven, the first 
thing the Captain did was to buy the most beau- 
tiful doll in all the city for the little girl. 

So in life's voyage our prayers may not be an- 
swered in the way man's judgment would dictate, 
but they are all as treasures stored in God's city 
and we shall find a rich fulfilment when we reach 
the shore. Yet even here and now, if the divine 
wisdom sees fit, He who holds the helm of the 
universe can surely reverse the lever. 



XXVII. 

Him that overcometh. 

CESTED MAXHOOD: The only part of 
man's nature that is valuable or permanent is 
the part that has been tried and tested. God must 
distinguish between the innocence that has never 
been brought to trial and the proved and tested 
manhood. 

The divine law is that of achievement. 

What converts the soft and flabby flesh into 
sinew and muscle ? 

Practice. 

What makes the mind vigorous and pene- 
trating ? 

Practice. 

And is the soul an exception to this law ? 



UEBS BEATA. 77 

How, I ask, does character become strong, 
heroic, and grand ? The answer is the same, By 
practice. 

The fir-tree of the north, on whose head have 
rested the snows of winter, and which has braved 
the shock of wind and tempest, stands as if in con- 
scious might it owned no other master than the 
Master of the storm ; but how weak and puny the 
sheltered hot-house plant that drinks only the sun- 
light and the dew into its existence. 

For a toy steamboat there is no need of great 
iron fastenings, but as for the trans- Atlantic liner, 
ribs of steel bind it about, since it was made to do 
battle with wind and wave. Is this not far more 
true of human life, whose voyage is into the 
eternities ? 

There is just as much difference between the 
life which takes the great forces about it into itself 
and turns them in the right direction and the life 
which does not, as there is between the ocean 
steamer and the mill-pond boat. 

I remember when I first saw the rock of Gibral- 
tar. There was a great storm and the waters were 
a seething mass of foam. Through the mists we 
could discern — faintly at first — the rock standing 

LofC.l 



78 URBS BEATA. 

as it has stood throughout the centuries, a silent 
sentinel of two seas and two continents. It stood 
there because it had defied wind and tempest, while 
other material more vacillating and unstable had 
been swept into the sea. And I thought of the old 
hymn that has brought comfort to so many hearts, 
and will be sung as long as life has sorrows : 

"The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, 
I will not, I will not desert to his foes. 
That soul, though all Hell should endeavor to shake, 
I'll never, no, never, no, never, forsake." 



XXVIII. 

A pillar in the temple of my God. 

€HAEACTEK : The Doric pillar is the fun- 
damental form of Greek architecture. It 
stands for support. The Greek taste would not 
allow ornamentation on a supporting structure. 
With an exception like the archaic temple of Eph- 
esus, where the relief on the pillars is probably a 
survival of the custom of covering wooden beams 
with bronze plates in repousse, it is the rule for no 
Greek temple to admit of columnar decoration* 
Where the entablature is light, sculptured columns 
may not be out of place ; but how incongruous to 
adorn a shaft which bears the burden of archi- 
trave, triglyphs, metopes, and matchless pediment 
sculptures ! 



80 URBS BEATA. 

Everything spoke of strength and stateliness. 

The worshipper must have felt the impress of 
power as he entered the shrine of his divinity. 
The Doric column, we see, is beautiful, not for 
external ornamentation but for symmetry in pro- 
portion and perfection in workmanship. So in 
life. 

It is not the ornamental life that counts. 

Life is not something brilliant and transitory, 
as the meteor's flash which goes out in a denser 
darkness. That may be man's idea, but God's 
idea is the stately column, strong, complete, majes- 
tic, beautiful. 

The Greek pillar was not made grand and 
stately in a day. Years upon years man was at 
work trying to erect a shaft worthy of God's tem- 
ple. In the same way life is not made sym- 
metrical and beautiful by any sudden process. 

It is the way we are living to-day that will fit 
us for the higher life to-morrow. 

I remember President Dwight saying that the 
most satisfying thing of his ten years' presidency 
of Yale, was to meet the old graduates, and see the 
character which the years since graduation had 
stamped upon their faces. 



URBS BEATA. 81 

Eternity means limitless unfolding. 

As I live now, so I am preparing myself for 
larger, richer, fuller development. 

What is it that converts the rough stone from 
the mountain quarry into the shapeliness of the 
temple column? It is the sculptor's chisel; but 
this chisel has to cut deep and hard. 

Character — x a P aKT VP — in its etymology is a 
cutter, a graver, an instrument always employed 
with violence. So the mallet moulds the hardest 
stone into the proportions of a Doric shaft. 

Does not human life need much, very much, 
moulding to be brought into Christlikeness I 

Some lives seem to need more than others. But 
remember that it is the stone which has been most 
hewn and shaped that becomes transformed into 
the pillar of the most beautiful symmetry. 



XXIX. 

Out of the Great Tribulation. 

BLOWS OF CHAEACTEE: What are the 
blows of character on the soul ? They are so 
frequent and so varied that only the individual 
life can know them all. Yet we speak of some of 
the commonest. 

In babyhood they begin. The child cries as if 
the little heart would break, when the toy is 
smashed. How trivial this seems to us who have 
gone on in life, but to him how real ! 

So all earth's trials will seem exceeding small 
when we look back on them from the experience of 
the larger life. 

In childhood's griefs, do we not have an illus- 
tration of how good God is? He is taking that 



URBS BEATA. 83 

life which is just begun in the world, and by these 
little worries is fitting that life for the sterner 
trials, the deeper sorrows, which the life must meet 
before it ends. 

A young man leaves his home. There comes 
the blow of homesickness. Although nearly eigh- 
teen years have passed, I shall never forget the 
heartache when I left my home to enter college. 
But suppose I had said : 

"I'll ward off that blow. I'll not let it strike, 
I'll always be sheltered by the love of home." 

Would not my life's column have been unsym- 
metrical ? 

Then when the young man goes out into the 
world, he is bound to feel at first that he is not 
appreciated as he should be. 

I do not believe there is one who at some time 
in his life has not felt that the world failed to 
value him as it ought. But lack of appreciation, 
imagined or real, does more for the soul than the 
plaudits of men. It teaches that first great lesson 
which every true life must learn, that men may 
ridicule, critics may censure, but if the soul is con- 
scious before God of doing what is right, it stands 
on a foundation as solid as the ages. 



84 UBBS BEATA. 

Why, if I bend my life to suit the varying ver- 
dict of men or to win popular applause, which 
often is a very easy thing to do, but a very cow- 
ardly thing, I should be like the tree gnarled and 
twisted by the storm, and not the straight and 
stately pillar. 

Then come the blows of temptation. How 
thick they rain upon the life ! 

All temptation is not the same. 

It is no temptation for me to gamble or to 
drink ; but have I the right to suppose that because 
I refrain from those things which are really no 
temptation to me I am thereby testing my char- 
acter \ 

To another life these may be stern trials, strik- 
ing hard on the soul, to mould it into symmetry. 
It is very true that each one has his peculiar beset- 
ments. 

Let me ask myself : 

"Am I free from envy ? Do I show more and 
more the Christ love ?" 

These are questions that may come home to my 
soul, and right here God will judge my life, as to 
what part has been tested and proved. 

Think of the blows of affliction ! Does it not 



UKBS BEATA. 85 

seem that life's slender column must break % But 
those heroic characters that stand out so grandly 
are those who have been tried by suffering; for 
even in regard to the Son of God Himself we read 
that it became Him to make the Captain of our 
Salvation perfect through suffering. 



XXX. 

The gates shall not he shut. 

CHE WELCOME : In the Eoman Forum, at 
the north entrance opposite the temple of 
Vesta, was the old arched gateway or door, itself 
the representation of the Roman atrium. We re- 
member that this temple of Janus, as it was called, 
was never shut in time of war. A beautiful 
thought originally lay behind this. Here it stood 
as the entrance to the city's hearth, the city's home. 
The king, the father of the state, and relatives and 
friends, were fighting far away ; but just as the door 
of the home stood open for the absent father, so the 
doors of the city's home were open wide to receive 
those who should return in triumph. 

Our life is a warfare, but it is an inspiring 



TTRBS BEATA. 87 

thought that the gates of the eternal home are 
standing open for us. 

"The gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by 
day, for there shall be no night there." 

"O sweet and blessed country, 

The home of God's elect! 
O sweet and blessed country, 

That eager hearts expect! 
Jesu, in mercy bring us 

To that dear land of rest ! 
Who art, with God the Father, 

And Spirit, ever blest." 



[The End.] 



JU 






JUL, 3» 1902 



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